


The Ends of the Earth

by RobertSaysThis



Series: Doctor Who: To Your Beginning [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 1960s, Action/Adventure, Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But I haven't written the bridging fics yet, Coronavirus, Cuban Missile Crisis, Diverges before Revolution of the Daleks, End of the World, Gen, HopePunk, In canon with my fics Isolation and Godsea, Nuclear Warfare, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Pre-Apocalypse, Spoilers for Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 11,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26876425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobertSaysThis/pseuds/RobertSaysThis
Summary: London, 1963. Two teachers stumble into a police box.London, 1962. The city is destroyed in nuclear fire.There were stories that happened before the first story was told.Before there was a beginning, something ends.
Relationships: The Doctor | Ruth Clayton & Thirteenth Doctor, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan
Series: Doctor Who: To Your Beginning [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1889194
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

The Police couldn’t help with the end of the world; Allie knew this. Not the missiles the Russians were aiming, nor the monsters that chased her like fear. The ones built like policemen, but parodied: the things with the badges for faces and the limbs that were long like brass knives. The police couldn’t save her from monsters because the police would be dead soon, like her. In days, in a week, at the moment the bombs started falling. Some people had hope, but Allie knew this for a fact: it was October, 1962, and it was the month that the planet would burn.

But if she didn’t have hope, she had something else, at least. Enough will was left in her to look for someone, to let them know. The police couldn’t stop the monsters, nor stall the fire. But they could be humans in the brief time that there still were humans, look at her with concern and tell her things would be okay. That wasn’t true, of course – they wouldn’t be – but it was connection she needed, not truth. To know there were other people who felt the same as her. A chance to be together, before they died.

And she’d die before most, she knew that too. It was all she could do not to collapse there and then. In a dark, abandoned street; no one would notice. They wouldn’t have time to find her before the end. Her with her hair half gone, her skin bleach-pale. Eyes red, nails cracked; nerves failing. She could taste the blood that was seeping into her stomach. Her body was falling apart along with the world.

And Allie knew what was happening to her, of course. She’d read the articles when growing up as a girl. Hiroshima, Nagasaki; she’d seen the photos and the symptoms. There were people miles from the blast and they’d died like this. Radiation from an atomic bomb. The bombs hadn’t fallen on London, of course, not yet. But somehow they’d fallen on her a bit too soon.

The police box loomed ahead of her up near the end of the alley. A hazy and wobbling outline through her misted eyes. She was sick enough that her perception of the world was bending, so things looked much bigger or smaller than what was real. As she came up to the police box and flung its doors wide open, she thought the inside might seem to be any size at all—

—but it was the same as they always were, cramped and dull. And yet standing tall inside it was a thing that should never be there—

Skin mushed like paste on paper, like the one from before. A policeman’s helmet, a policeman’s clothes. The badge of the St John’s Ambulance instead of a face. And copper instead of arms, long wire-like _things_ , like hooks or the legs of an insect stretched down past his legs of a man.

“It’s you!” Allie cried. “It’s another one!” 

“Ibble ip mim baum,” said the monster. “Toddle dup mon sum.” 

It towered over her as her legs gave way, its strange, metallic arms extending out— 

—but there was a cry and a flash, something hitting it hard on the side. Broken, it crumpled beside her on the ground, green foam seeping from its paper maché skin. 

There was someone peering above them both, someone normal. Not a policeman, though; only a woman. She looked down on them both like a man with a badge for a face was the most everyday thing in the world. 

Allie stared up at her, voice now no more than a gasp. 

“It’s an alien!” she said. “The alien had a police box!” 

The woman above her was a blur of blue and rainbows, who nodded. 

“Really?” she said. “That’s unusual. You know what I think about that?” 

She looked back at Allie, conspiratorially. 

“We’d better not say it too loudly,” she said. “Or all of them’ll want one.” 


	2. Chapter 2

It was days earlier, and the light had grown calm and warm. This far into the autumn of 1962, it felt like it might not be autumn much longer at all— there were trees already almost bare of leaves; you could feel winter breaking out through the gaps to the sky. Leaves mulched under Yaz and the Doctor’s feet as they clomped their way up the road. The world smelled full of mush and rain as they came up to the house where they were staying.

Absolutely none of this was on Yaz’s mind. There was only a haze, a mixture of anger and dread. She’d known the Doctor for a fair while, now, but she still sometimes did things that were impossible to explain. Not in the “alien from outer space” way, either— in a frustratingly human way, like a friend from work whose head was in the clouds. There was no other way to describe someone who’d suggest holidaying in 1962 and not thinking to mention—

“A missile crisis!” she said again, out loud.

The Doctor smiled.

“Like I said, Yaz, It’s nothing to worry about!” she said. “That’s why I didn’t think to mention it.”

Yaz boggled. “How can it be nothing to worry about?” she snapped.

“Because it’s fine in the end! You’re the proof of it. Everything’s tense for a while; the US and USSR glaring at each other. But it’s nothing more than that. You know how many alien invasions your planet’s survived?”

Yaz frowned. “That’s not as reassuring as you think it is,” she said.

They were staying in a top floor flat in a compact and semi-detached flat; one the Doctor had ended up with and then forgotten about. Yaz had been shocked that the Doctor had property in London, and more shocked still that she didn’t seem to care. A real estate portfolio as well as a time machine, while Yaz was stuck as a renter for life in Sheffield. It was true in more ways than one, she thought. The Doctor really was from another planet.

The door to their flat was down the side of a narrow lane, one barely wide enough for a person to squeeze within. In front of it was a garden where a woman was trying to rake leaves, though the pile she made seemed to squelch into mulch as she did. She was small and black and perhaps in her middle thirties, the age someone might think the Doctor was if they didn’t know that she was ancient. There was a grim expression set hard on her face. She didn’t look like someone who thought things would work out in the end.

The woman heard them come up the lane and smiled, though Yaz could see tension straining behind it. The thought the woman was trying not to have; the thing the world was trying so hard to forget. She’d seen it so much in her travels. These days, she even saw it in her mirror.

“Are you two moving in?” the woman said. “I thought that old flat was abandoned. An old bloke used to own it, ages back.”

She frowned.

“Are you his daughter?” she asked the Doctor.

“Something like that. This is Yaz; I’m the Doctor.”

The woman chuckled at that, a weary laugh that said she’d met too many doctors before.

“That’s right, is it?” she said. “And I’m a nurse, up at the hospital here. Judith,” she added, in a way that wasn’t quite friendly enough.

“Nurse Judith!” said the Doctor, grinning, like she’d eaten all the friendliness left behind. “Fancy that! We share all the medical knowledge I probably know. How many hearts you’re supposed to have. Whether women get man flu.”

There was an awkward silence.

“You’re both doctors, then?” said Judith after too much of it had passed. “Down from the North?”

“Yaz has a job in the police force,” said the Doctor. “Doesn’t start for a while yet.”

There was a flash of something on Judith’s face again, the huge thing unsaid that was hanging in the air. That there might be no police force for Yaz to go back to. That there might be nothing for anyone, and very soon.

“You’re a brave girl,” said Judith to Yaz. “A job like that, as someone who isn’t white. I hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for; it’s worse there than it is on the wards. And it’s hard enough there. Believe me.”

“Don’t worry,” said Yaz. “I can handle myself. We’re both tougher than we look.”

“Well, we all have to be,” said Judith. “When it comes to times like this.”

The silence came back again, no longer awkward. It held threatening, ominous. It felt like a weapon itself.

“There’s no need to worry!” said the Doctor, oblivious. “Don’t listen to what they say on the news. All of it’ll blow over, in the end.”

Judith fiddled with the rake, its weight mulching against the leaves.

“That’d be something,” she said, very quietly.

“Trust me. I’m— well. I’ve said that bit already. But it is all going to be fine. I know what I’m talking about.”

“Doctors often do,” said Judith.

“We’ve seen more than people realise,” said the Doctor, missing the subtext completely. “And I’ll see you again, once all of this is over. Make a thing of it, maybe. Three cheers for being alive.”

Judith didn’t cheer, not even once. Her rake looked limp, slack there in her hand. Yaz caught her eye as the Doctor went up to the flat door. A sympathetic look, a tiny nod. Sometimes people needed to know that she knew, too, the way that her friend could often be.

She went through the door that the Doctor had opened, watching as her friend bounded up the concrete stairs, fishing a key from her pocket for the door at the top. Wishing her walk could be as enthusiastic, Yaz followed.

“I think this is the house that still has a boiler,” said the Doctor as she opened the door.

The blast of cold air hit them at the same time as the smell.

“Hang on,” she muttered, “that’s the one up on Tottenham Court Road.”

Yaz once thought it’d be really brilliant, to travel through all time and space.


	3. Chapter 3

The world felt whiter in 1962, but not just because of the colour of people’s skin. Everyone the Yaz and the Doctor walked past on the busy street looked ashen; shaken. This was nearly sixty years before Yaz’s time, and she knew she should be noticing that. The smell of cigarettes lingering everywhere; the fashions too young to be retro. But all of that was vague, at a far distance. All that was at the front of her mind was fear.

The past was never like it was in the movies, Yaz often thought. It was all both much too old, and far too new. In a film you would see about the sixties everything might seem to gleam: the classic cars and forgotten fashions pristine. But the real cars rusted at the edges, the skirts and the hemlines were frayed. The sixties were too busy living to look like they should be the sixties. They needed to be, if there weren’t many days left to spare.

“It’s funny coming to a place the year before you lived there,” said the Doctor as they walked up the street. “Places you remember that haven’t opened up yet; graffiti missing which nobody’s thought to paint. That wasn’t here in 1963,” she added, pointing to a grand looking building with turrets.

Yaz looked up at it.

“But it’s beautiful,” she said.

“Don’t understand it myself,” said the Doctor. “They really like knocking things down.”

She glanced at Yaz’s face, and her face dropped when she saw it. Hopefully she’d think it was the building that Yaz was looking down about.

“C’mon,” said the Doctor. “Don’t look so glum. Read this week’s Beano!” she added, waving it in her hand. “It’s funny.”

“The Beano’s never been funny,” muttered Yaz.

The Doctor looked over at her, now sympathetic.

“Being here is bothering you, isn’t it?” she said.

Yaz sighed.

“I know you think everything’s going to be okay,” she said, “but it’s hard to believe. For me as well as that Judith. The look in people’s eyes, not quite hopelessness. It”—

She felt her voice catching as she spoke.

“It reminds me of home,” she said.

The Doctor looked at her friend’s face, at the faces of all the people around. Like she was trying to take them in for the first time, to understand.

“I know it’s scary, Yaz,” she said. “Really, I do. But you don’t just have to take my word that things’ll be fine. I can prove it.”

From a pocket she took out an instrument a bit like her sonic screwdriver— long, thin and silver, with a little blue bulb on one end.

“Had this for a while,” the Doctor said. “See? Regular Geiger counter; bit of Doctor magic sprinkled in. Decaying timelines are a bit like decaying atoms; give out a sort of radiation as they break. Switch it on and you’ll hear it; the timeline’s as stable as anything”—

She pushed the button on its side and it started beeping wildly, loud enough for the people passing by to notice. Despite herself, Yaz flinched, recoiling like she’d somehow been shot by the noise.

“No!” shouted the Doctor .”Yaz! That’s— it’s not the right sort of radiation. It’s the normal kind. Like you’d get from a”—

“Nuclear bomb?” said Yaz, very quietly.

The Doctor grimaced.

“I didn’t want to say it,” she said. “C’mon,” she added. “Follow that beep!”

Yaz felt her legs ache as she ran after her bounding friend, sky-blue coat billowing out like a cape. The beep of the Geiger counter grew louder and more frequent as they stormed up the busy street, until they reached a near-abandoned stretch of road where the shops were faded or boarded up. Almost everything there looked ruined and old—

—except a bright, blue police box, its paint not beginning to peel.

The two of them looked at it, uncertainly. Steady in the Doctor’s hand, the Geiger counter continued to blare.

“Stay back, Yaz,” said the Doctor. “That much radiation, it isn’t safe. Not for a human, at any rate. Some of us are made of sterner stuff.”

Yaz weighed up the question neither of them were asking, and decided that it needed to be asked.

“Do y’think it’s you?” she said. “That it’s your TARDIS?”

The Doctor frowned, face scronching with concentration.

“It’s not a version of the box I recognise,” she said. “But I don’t know anymore. There could be loads of me in my future.”

She sighed.

“And in my past. It’s come to something when it’s an alien spaceship you’re expecting in one of these”—

She flung open the police box door and something much worse than an alien spaceship fell out. The corpse of a policeman, cracking heavy on the concrete pavement. Stiff and waxen. He’d clearly been dead for a while.

“Don’t come near him,” said the Doctor, quietly. Clumps of his hair came off as she touched his head. Something about his skin seemed slightly wrong.

“Radiation poisoning,” she said, softly.

She turned round to look Yaz in her face.

“I wasn’t wrong, Yaz,” she said. “There’s nothing interfering with the timeline. Everything’s stable; nothing’s rearranged. Atom bombs don’t fall on this city in 1962.”

She sighed heavily, looking back at the corpse of the policeman.

“But I think he might have died from them, anyway,” she said.


	4. Chapter 4

The Doctor was engrossed in her gadgets for some time once they got back to their freezing flat. As soon as they got in she shut the door to her room, and over the next few hours Yaz got used to the odd noises that seeped through the walls. The beep of the sonic screwdriver. A horrible banging noise. And the sound of her friend, barely audible, muttering possibilities under her breath.

“Judith’s invited us to dinner,” Yaz said when she finally worked up the courage to enter the Doctor’s room. “I think she’s lonely. Needs someone to talk to, maybe. About everything that’s going on.”

The Doctor didn’t respond, or even seem to notice that Yaz was there. She was hunched over a map of London spread out on her bed, with things she’d stolen from the police box piled up on one side.

“Doctor,” said Yaz, “are you even listening to me?”

She gave a sharp look at her friend, who was licking a policeman’s helmet with her tongue. When she saw Yaz was looking up at her she blushed, looking up and unsure how exactly to arrange her face.

“The police are monsters,” she muttered.

Yaz sighed.

“I know a lot of people think that these days,” she said. “But there are good folk in there; they’re working hard”—

“What?” said the Doctor. “No, I mean they actually are monsters. Aliens,” she added, scrunching up her face. “Things full of goo. The reading’s clear.”

“On your _tongue?_ ” said Yaz.

“Sour as anything. Someone’s called down the COPS.”

Yaz sighed. 

“Alien police,” she said. “Again.”

The Doctor nodded.

“The Cosmic Ordinance Police Service,” she said. “The Fundamental Forces. Who upheld the letter of the law. You know the Time Lords. These were their... Time Dogsbodies, I suppose.”

She frowned.

“But it doesn’t make sense that they’re here,” she said. They’re only used for something major. I mean really big. They’re armed police; there’s no telling how many arms they’ve got there up their sleeve. They’ll grab you first and ask their questions later. They were outlawed a long way back, before I was born”—

She stopped talking as she heard her own words.

“Before when I thought I was born,” she said, very softly.

“I still forget,” she added, after a while had passed.

“It’s okay,” said Yaz. “I know it must be hard.”

“I think of my family and wonder— did they know? Did my grans know, when they made me that quilt spun of time?”

She sighed.

“Nothing’s simple any more,” she said.

Beside them both, a strange device like a big pile of whisks began to whirr and bleep.

“Except that,” she added. “Tracked down the COPS. The nearest one’s in an alley not far from here. Ready to run?”

Yaz looked back at her uncomfortably.

“Something’s up” the Doctor said.

Yaz smiled sadly.

“This was supposed to be a holiday,” she said. “Alien Policemen and a nuclear war? It’s not much of a break.”

“I know,” said the Doctor gently.

“I’m tired,” said Yaz. “We all are. 2020’s been so hard. Even if you can get away from it.”

“Well, we can take it easy soon,” said the Doctor. “Track down the COPS, wait ‘till a war doesn’t happen, then we’ll all settle down with a big chip sandwich. Something to look forward to, eh?”

Yaz smiled again, wishing she could agree.

But she was thinking that whether in 2020 or 1962, it wasn’t so easy to look forward to things anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

Darkness had fallen, and Yaz and the Doctor had come back to the street they’d walked down earlier in the day. This was London and the night was young, but everything seemed shockingly quiet to Yaz. There was almost no one walking along the street outside— though the pubs were still open, and those at least seemed to be busy. Yaz looked at the faces in their windows as the two of them passed by, cracking dams holding the water back. Their eyes said everything. They’d clearly had more than a few.

The Doctor was sweeping her Geiger counter round as they walked past the brightened windows, in a big, long arc that drew circles in the air. It was still beeping, but the sound was angriest at a different place: an alley to the side of the one which they’d run down before.

“No police box down there,” said the Doctor, her face set, “but I reckon we’ll come by the police.”

She bounded on her way to possible death, not even pausing. Yaz felt her shoulders sagging slightly, but she did still follow, more reluctantly than she might have done once before. Packed all around her was the human relationship with death. It bought it home all the more, how the Doctor wasn’t one of her.

The alley was deserted and dark, with barely even a window to cast some light. Old metal bins were edged up at its sides; the two of them had to struggle to get through. The smells hadn’t changed, in almost sixty years. Rubbish was rubbish, whenever you happened to be.

There was a figure up ahead, shrouded in gloom. Standing tall behind the bins was a figure, its shoulders almost scraping the alley’s sides. A bit like a policeman, but _wrong_ , too stretched out to be human. Moving like a broken down robot, its arms like insect legs drooping long down. And of course—

—“What’s with his _face?!,”_ said Yaz, horrified.

It was there between his neck and helmet, both police-box blue. No eyes, no nose or mouth, nothing human at all. Just the logo of the St. John’s Ambulance service, staring unhelpfully into their eyes.

“It’s PC gone mad,” muttered the Doctor.

“Wotsall,” said the figure in front of them. “Wotsall, Wotsall.”

“ _That’s _ from the Time Lords?!” said Yaz.

“‘Fraid so,” her friend replied. “Must be one of the COPS. They’re trying to blend in!”

“Like that?!”

“I didn’t say they were very good at it. They’ve got the box and the person inside a bit confused.”

“Disden,” the figure said, in something between a South London accent and a voice like knocks on wood. Its badge of a head looked towards them, looking as startled as it could with a face built without any eyes.

“ _Doctor_ ,” it said, like the word was a slur.

A clicking noise came from inside it as it raised its copper limbs.”

“Well, they’ve got one thing right, at least,” said the Doctor with a sigh. “Monopoly on violence.”

One of the limbs zoomed out towards them, extending a long way over the cobbles like a grappling hook. The Doctor leapt back as the limb slammed through where her throat has been, then zipped back into the figure with a _whoosh._

“Bigger on the inside,” said the Doctor.

“More fighting, less explaining,” said Yaz from behind a bin. “We’ve talked about this!”

The limbs smashed out of the sleeves of the COP once more, smashing into the stone walls on either side of the ally.

“Those things are strong stuff!” the Doctor cried, nodding at the metal limbs. “He’ll catapult himself towards us at speed!”

“ _We’ve talked about this!_ ” yelled Yaz, as the COP catapulted towards them at speed.

“We have?” said the Doctor vaguely as she dove down to the ground. 

“You probably weren’t listening!” Yaz cried.

The COP flew past them and kept on going, tumbling into some bins behind. Rubbish splatted over its sparkling uniform, staining it with rot.

“Tobble bit com nole,” it muttered, struggling to its feet.

“He’s not stopping,” said Yaz.

“Then this calls for extreme measures,” said the Doctor. “Thing about the COPS, they’re not really alive. Just big moving lumps like plasticine. That changes things up again.”

She whipped a raygun from a pocket and was shooting it before Yaz was able to cry out. With a wham and a flash a blast hit the COP on the side. It wailed like a siren as one of its limbs fell away.

“Systill!” it cried. “Presanneret!”

“You never said you had that!” said Yaz, nodding at the raygun.

“It’s recent! Got it from a thing on a spaceship; me and a whole load of Russian playwrights against some sort of metaphor for censorship. Bloke who gave me it was annoying, though. Kept saying I should fire it, and I could never figure out why”—

“Maybe fire it now?” said Yaz. The COP was moving towards them again, sparks hissing from its severed limb.

“Right,” said the Doctor. “Less explaining.”

She looked straight at the figure before her, and shot a blast straight at its head. It roared and fell hard to the ground, green goo bubbling out of the womb. It looked vaguely unreal, artificial. Too much like a special effect.

“You shot him,” said Yaz flatly. “He’s dead.”

“They’re not alive,” said the Doctor. “Not even robots. Just a puppet, literally. I cut the strings.”

She whipped round her Geiger counter again, and Yaz heard its furious beeping.

“Radiation from that police box we were at,” said the Doctor. “There’s one still there. C’mon. It’s just up ahead.”

She ran away before Yaz could respond, not even thinking that her friend might not choose to follow her. But Yaz held back, watching as the COP’s shell dissolved.

“Just a puppet,” she said, very quietly.

She felt dull, heavy, not really alive. She’d put her whole reason for living on the Doctor’s shoulders. Now the weight of that life was pressing down hard upon hers.

She sighed, summoning the energy she had left—

—and then she was running to the place where the Doctor had gone.


	6. Chapter 6

Yaz only saw the battle as light and sounds, distant as she made her way to the alley. By the time she’d got near the police box she saw it was already over, the shell of the COP laid out broken on the ground.  


The Doctor was kneeling by the frail frame of a young woman, and from what Yaz could see that woman looked broken, too. Thin hair, red eyes, skin like a film of plastic. With a shock, Yaz realised they were probably about the same age.  


The Doctor looked meaningfully up at her, warning her not to approach.  


“This is Allie,” the Doctor said. “She’s in a bad way.  _ Radiation _ ,” she added with a whisper, as if Allie couldn’t have heard.  


The Doctor held out a palm towards Yaz, like she was physically holding her back.  


“You can’t get too close,” she said. “I can handle it. Humans can’t.”  


She looked into Yaz’s eyes, matter of factly.  


“ _ I can shake it out of my shoe,”  _ she said.  


A joke would have been completely inappropriate in the circumstances, so presumably that must actually have been true. So Yaz held back, remembering her training. As an officer you had to know when a crisis was being handled. You had to know when there was nothing you could do.  


“I’m going to die,” Allie said, softly like it hurt to speak at all.  


“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “I’m sorry.”  


“It’s not your fault.”  


The Doctor shook her head.  


“Not sorry like that. It shouldn’t have happened. And I’ll find out why it did.”  


Allie cackled, trying as best as she could to laugh.  


“It’s only a few days I’m losing,” she said.  


“No,” said the Doctor. “That’s the thing. See that, down there?” She pointed down at the COP with the raygun still held in her hand.  


Allie shook when she saw the corpse again, having clearly forgotten it was there. She tried to sob, then the sob became mixed with her coughing, and Yaz looked away as the cough became thick with fresh blood.  


“Allie,” said the Doctor softly, “Allie, it’s okay. I’m saying that’s an alien. They’re out there, see? And I’m a time traveler; we’re out there, just the same. So you can believe me when I say— the world survives.”  
  


She smiled sadly.  
  


“You do get through this," she said. "I promise.”  
  


She took Allie’s hand in hers, and squeezed it gently. Despite everything that had happened, Allie was smiling too.   
  


She looked back up at the blue box looming over them.  
  


“Are you the police?” she asked.  
  


“Something like it. Me and Yaz over there.”  
  


Yaz nodded over to them both, very awkwardly. Allie smiled back, as best she could.  
  


“I wish I’d found you both in there,” she said.  
  


And then the last of her life had left her, and she was gone.  
  


The Doctor closed Allie’s eyelids over ruined eyes.  
  


“Yeah,” she said softly. “Yeah. Don’t we all.”  
  


And suddenly she was on her feet, looking back down the long alley they’d both come down. Yaz looked over to her, confused, but the Doctor pointed forward into the gloom.  
  


“I can feel it,” she said. “There’s a Time Lord here. A powerful one.”  
  


Yaz saw him in the shadows where the Doctor was pointing. A figure poised and distant, a man both tall and thin.  
  


“This time is safe,” said the Doctor. “But maybe the people here aren’t.”  
  


An ominous beeping blared from the Doctor’s pocket, and she fumbled out her mobile phone. By the time Yaz looked back into the shadows, the figure had slipped quietly away.  
  


“Is that bad?” said Yaz, looking at her friend’s horrified expression.  
  


“Very,” said the Doctor. “I’ve forgotten something extremely important.”  
  


She sighed.  
  


“Judith’s cooking,” she said. “We’re going to be late for dinner.”


	7. Chapter 7

Tense discussions and troop movements. Battleships moving into position. On the surface the newsreader on the radio was unflapppable, recounting the story that might kill him as if there wasn’t any reason to find it interesting. But beneath the crackle of the airwaves there was a strange weight in his voice. A gravity. It felt like events were pulling the world into a black hole, and now they were pulling his words into them too.

Yaz clinked her knife against her plate, uncomfortably. She looked at Judith, then at the Doctor. None of them were saying anything. Judith had hardly eaten, and the Doctor was stuffing beef into her mouth with her hands.

“I’ll get that radio off,” said Judith quietly. “It’ll be putting us off our dinner.”

Yaz looked down at her food again as Judith got to her feet. Beef and peas. Carrots boiled and pale. Stiff gravy solid, a film over the best china. It almost certainly wasn’t Halal, but she didn’t feel comfortable saying anything. She’d already sat awkwardly when Judith had started to say grace, not knowing whether she should mouth along with the words.

The silence kept on going with the radio off, now even more uncomfortably. Judith’s knife scraped down against her plate as she cut her beef very precisely.

“I’m sorry,” Judith said. “I know I’m not being much of a host. There’s a lot on my mind at the minute. What with— what with everything.”

“She’ll tell you not to worry in a second,” Yaz muttered, gesturing at the Doctor with her fork.

“‘Cause it’s going to be fine”, said the Doctor, without looking up.

“You seem very confident of it,” said Judith. “Are you”—

She flinched suddenly and stopped talking.

“We’re not military,” said the Doctor.

“I didn’t say you were.”

“But you thought it. You stopped talking because you suddenly thought that knowing might get you into trouble.”

Judith looked oddly at her, fork halfway to mouth.

“Then what are you?” she said.

The Doctor sighed and furrowed her brow.

“It’s an interesting question,” she said. “The fact of it is”—

“We’re time travellers,” said Yaz.

“Yaz!”

“What’s the point in hiding it? She’s an alien and I’m from 2020,” she said to Judith apologetically. “I know it’s a lot to take in.”

Yaz wasn’t sure she’d have said that back when Ryan and Graham had been around. But now, her world contained so much more. Pandemics and nuclear weapons. The deaths of people because they weren’t the right kind of people, in the past and the present and maybe the future as well. Once, she’d told Ryan that maybe things always got better. But the Doctor had known they wouldn’t, and she’d never said.

Judith was shaking her head. “Time travellers?” she said. “That can’t be true.”

“The universe is big enough for it,” said the Doctor.

“Not that,” said Judith. “It’s”—

She stared down at her plate.

“There won’t be any world in 2020,” she said, very quietly.

“There is,” said Yaz. “I mean, it’s not doing great. But it’s there.”

“You’re telling me you’re from a city on the Moon?”

“I’m from Sheffield,” said Yaz. “About as much life there.”

Judith shook her head.

“Sheffield won’t be there next month, let alone next century,” she said. “You can’t convince me this isn’t the big one.”

“It isn’t,” muttered the Doctor with a mouth full of peas.

“I’ve always said it,” said Judith, finally coming out of her shell. “All this space age rubbish. It’s to cover up what the future really is. Rockets carrying us to the stars, when really they’ll be launching bombs to our houses! It’s all about war, when you scratch a bit under the surface. And we’re overdue another one.”

She sighed.

“It’s hard to see the point, in a world like this,” she said. “To keep on going.”

“And you find it hard?” said Yaz. “To live in the world.”

There was no response. Yaz recognised the look in Judith’s face, the effort it took to hold the emotion in. She’d seen it too much, with the Doctor, in the force.

“Judith,” she said firmly. “You’ll be okay, yeah? Okay in yourself. Whatever happens.”

She smiled, as genuinely as she could.

“It’s not so great in my time, either,” she said. “I mean, it’s not this bad. Maybe it sometimes feels like it. There’s a virus, spreading across the world. She won’t even tell me when it’ll end,” she added, pointing her thumb at the Doctor. “But”—

“I know,” said Judith softly. “I know.”

They were all silent again.

“Sometimes it seems like the only way out is killing yourself,” Judith said. “But you have to go on.”

Yaz tried not to let the worry show on her face. Internally, she took a very deep breath.

“There’s hope, Judith,” she said. “Not just that you’ll get through this. We met Rosa Parks, in 1955. People like her, they change the world. They make things better”—

She’d said something like that to Ryan, when they’d been there in 1955. He’d not looked convinced way back then, and Judith seemed similar now. But as she said it again Yaz felt how much she’d changed, how her own belief in the future had been shaken. She hadn’t known what was coming just down the road. How much fighting they all had still to do.

Judith fidgeted with her fingers uncomfortably.

“It’s terrible,” she said. “But sometimes… when I think of people doing astounding things. Changing the world, like you said. It makes me think that I’ll never do anything like that.”

“A lot of the people who did once thought the same,” said the Doctor.

“I want to make a difference,” Judith said. “But sometimes I find myself hating the people who do. Like Doctor Clayton.”

The Doctor and Yaz flashed a look at each other.

“Doctor Clayton,” the Doctor said.

“At the hospital,” Judith said. “She’s a woman and she’s black, and she’s a doctor, too. Imagine it! There was a newspaper article about her, what she’s achieved. But you know she’ll never let you forget it. And you think, she’s managed that, and it’s all I’m doing to keep going!“

She stopped briefly, and when she started talking again there was a bitter edge in her voice.

“She doesn’t get half of the stick the rest of us do. People refuse to be seen by us, by the black nurses. No one’d ever dream of refusing her. And they talk about people like Rosa, when they talk to her. Say that they’re very good _examples._ ”

“You don’t want that,” said Yaz.

“That isn’t the point,” Judith said. “It all makes you feel less than human.”

That might be ironic, Yaz thought, if Doctor Clayton was who she sounded like.

“It’s horrible when people look down on you,” said the Doctor carefully. “And what makes it really bad, it’s when they’re peering down at you from their glasses, looking disapproving.”

“She does do that!” Judith said.

The Doctor threw down her fork. “She’s me,” she said.

Judith boggled at her.

“I’ve changed a bit since then,” said the Doctor apologetically.

“She’s an alien,” said Yaz. “She does alien things. Like changing bodies.”

“That’s how you know everything’s fine!” said Judith excitedly. “Because you remember being her”—

“Not exactly,” said the Doctor. “I don’t know much about this version of me. Not even what she’s doing here. I don’t remember.”

She looked at Judith determinedly.

“So I’ll have to find out,” she said.

“Oh,” said Judith. “But you won’t mention me, right? Only I don’t want any bother. Not with everything that’s going on.”

“I won’t,” said the Doctor. “But trust me, Judith,” she added wearily. “I’m worried the bother might only just be beginning.”


	8. Chapter 8

The October sun hung cold in the windows of the hospital the next morning, shining grey light on the Doctor’s coat and turning it dull. Everything was pallid at this point in 1962. The patients, the workers, the sky. A hospital was often a waiting room, and maybe the whole world was, too. A place strung out through anxiety and tedium. Somewhere you’d spend time endlessly, as you waited for an end to come.

Yaz had refused to come with her, and the Doctor had a feeling she knew why. Her friend had withdrawn into herself more and more since they’d spent some time in 2020. She could pretend that was because of the business with the statues, or from seeing a sea full of gods. But the Doctor knew Yaz better than that, even if she didn’t always know to be letting on.

Her mind was enormous, but Yaz somehow filled it up entirely. Up through the wood-panelled corridors of the hospital, past floors and rooms stinking of disinfectant. She was lost in thought all the way to the cancer wards, where she’d been told that Doctor Clayton would be.

Somehow, the Doctor’s former self was evading detection, but she didn’t seem to be trying very hard. Her black and white photo was there at the ward reception, the name _DOCTOR CLAYTON_ in capital letters below. She looked out both solemnly and with a smile, a single black woman in a sea of white men. That was Doctors for you, though, wasn’t it? And maybe in more ways than one.

And she was just as easy to find when the Doctor entered the ward. Turning round, startled, the only conscious person in the room. On every bed was a frail and shrunken figure, barely living. She almost looked like she was watching over a morgue. 

Her coat was white now, something like a medical doctor’s— but everything else about her was still the same. Her colourful shirt, her glasses. Her expression as she looked at this newcomer, mildly bemused. 

“I’m sorry,” this Doctor said to her future self. “These aren’t visiting hours. We aren’t making exceptions in the circumstances, either. Hopefully we all have a few more hours left.” 

“You’re not much for bedside manner,” said the Doctor. 

“And you’re not much for fashion. Even in a decade like this.” 

“You’re rude, aren’t you? I forgot that you were rude.” 

The other Doctor laughed. “Was there a previous engagement I’ve forgotten?” she said. “Only I don’t remember having the pleasure.” 

“Timestreams,” the Doctor said. “You won’t remember me. But if I stay here enough they should start to come into sync.” 

The other Doctor frowned. “I am getting something,” she said, rubbing her temples. “A future version of me! So many colours. Not great at coats. A strangely unappealing personality.” 

The Doctor now frowned as well. 

“No,” she said, “that’s one of the other ones”— 

“It was you!” said the other Doctor excitedly. “When I was human. And after I stopped being human! You were there.” 

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “And back then you were similarly complimentary." 

“Well. I’m under some stress, as you can tell. Things have only gotten worse since I ran up and down this planet’s timestream. I’ve been camping out here for some time— but all sorts are attacking the hospital, hunting me down. There’ve been a fair number of... _mishaps_ , let’s put it like that. But I’m still here.” 

“Even without the monsters I’d be impressed,” said the Doctor. “A black woman doctor in 1962. You haven’t made it easy for yourself.” 

The other Doctor grimaced. 

“You can’t even imagine,” she said. “After this, I’ve a good mind to take it easy. Be a white man for a number of bodies. Maybe more than a score”— 

She was cut off by an ominous clank of metal, then human screams rising in the distance. 

“It’s the COPS!” the Doctor shouted. 

Her other self boggled. “Not the Cosmic Ordinance”— 

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “Them.” 

“Then it’s worse than I thought,” said the other Doctor. “I was sure the Division’s lackeys couldn’t track me. But the two of us together might be enough of a signal.” 

She scowled. 

“You’ve led them right to me,” she said. 

“Not on purpose,” said the Doctor, slightly lamely. 

“I’m remembering something else about you,” said the other Doctor. 

“Oh?” 

“I found you annoying.” 

“Oh,” the Doctor said. 

Her holiday wasn’t turning out like she’d hoped it would at all. 

“The scraping and clanging of long metal arms was getting louder. There were more screams from the corridors, then nurses and doctors running by… 

...then two Doctors watched apprehensively as something between a policeman and a spider clanked into view, metal arms erupting from several points on its torso. 

“Dubbledokil irt,” it said. “Sleefalirm.” 

“I hope you’re able to handle yourself,” said the other Doctor as she picked up a scalpel from a nearby tray, holding it in a way that did not suggest a philosophy of pacifism and non-violence. 

“More than you might think,” said the Doctor grimly, drawing her ray gun out to fight once more. 

The other Doctor nodded. “You’re not only rainbows, I see.” 

“Not at all,” the Doctor said. “You’re not sure if I’m qualified for the job? At least now I have the chance to prove it.”

The metal limbs of the COP were smashing into the roof as it rose its body into the air— 

—and the two Doctors moved forward as one, and began to fight— 


	9. Chapter 9

—and the COP was firing arms from its sides all over the hospital ward, smashing into the floor and the roof as its body rose above them, now suspended. Some of the arms were giant, much bigger than the ones the Doctor had seen before, and they held the alien policeman firm as it stared at them with its eyeless head.

“Nobble nip mon burr,” it said. “Scrumpers.”

The Doctor fired ray gun blasts at some of the COP’s lower arms, but these ones were stronger than the ones from the night before. The blasts burned the arms until they glowed white hot, but they remained firm, holding the COP from the ground.

“Make sure it keeps clear of the patients!” the Doctor cried, as another arm shot from the alien’s torso, smashing hard into the wall.

“It’s not like they’ve got long left!” the other Doctor shouted.

“They’ve got long enough!” the Doctor cried. She grabbed onto a nearby arm, which was swinging and smashing round, and large enough for a woman to clamber upon. Grimacing, she slowly began to climb.

“Tibble naut caux im,” warbled the COP. “Torill bit nin gam.”

A massive metal arm burst out of its chest, flying out towards the other Doctor. Without flinching she flung herself to the side, as the arm smashed into the wooden floor where she had been.

“Long arm of the law,” she muttered, getting back onto her feet.

“Not much cop,” said the Doctor, as the arm she was on flung wildly around.

They nodded at each other slightly, acknowledging how clever they were.

“It’s nice to have someone who appreciates my sense of humour,” said the other Doctor.

“Laughing at your own jokes.”

“You don’t have to put it like that.”

The Doctor was taking out her sonic screwdriver with one hand, the other firmly wrapped round the arm of the COP. More, smaller arms erupted out of the alien’s body, swiping at the Doctor as she tried to clamber up high. Before she could react one whipped around just above her outstretched hand, hitting her sonic screwdriver to the floor.

“Indiscriminate use of arms!” the Doctor cried. “That’s definitely a violation of something.”

Below her, the other Doctor was picking the sonic screwdriver up from the floor, ignoring the swiping of several metal arms as she did so.

“You said you didn’t need a screwdriver!” the Doctor shouted.

“I don’t,” said her older self. “I just muddle through with whatever rubbish I find lying around.”

The Doctor scowled, and thought better than to say anything. She hauled her way to the top of the giant arm, to the space where the body and head of the COP were held.

“It’s funny, though!” she said as she took out her ray gun. “You with a screwdriver, me with a blaster. Walk a mile in each other’s shoes.”

“We’re the same person!” shouted the other Doctor as she repelled a slew of arms with a sonic blast. “Our shoes are each other’s shoes!”

She watched as the Doctor leaned over the head of the COP, then started bashing it with the heel of her gun.

“Or at least that’s what I’m trying to believe,” muttered the other Doctor from the floor. “That end of a gun’s not the useful one for violence!”

“Can’t risk missing. A blast could kill someone.”

“I’ll bet you use none of your tools to their full potential,” said the other Doctor as she waggled the sonic screwdriver. “I bet you’ve not even used this thing to do hypersound!”

“Because hypersound’s banned!” said the Doctor as she kept thwacking her gun against the head of the COP.

“Not in times of war.”

“This isn’t a time of war”—

“Oh, it is. I made sure of it. I wrote the conventions. This is by the book.”

“Hypersound,” said the other Doctor grimly, fiddling with the screwdriver’s innards with her nail—

—and then there was something like a silence a person could never have heard. Like if sound had become louder than sound, and just as painful, like it was filling every part of the air and the bodies in it and was solid in the pulsing room—

—and the COP exploded into a pile of goo. 

The Doctor fell down from the mess onto the floor, a bit too heavily.

“That’s not the way to protect yourself while falling,” said the other Doctor.

“At some point I forgot what I knew about practical anatomy,” said the Doctor through the pain.

She got to her feet and looked at the ruined ward. The patients still alive, the live-giving machines stlll working. But everything covered in a mixture of metal and goo.

“You do realise after a fight like that what a terrible mess it makes,” said one Doctor.

“Yes,” said the other one. “You do.”

They smiled at each other knowingly.

“Y’know,” said the Doctor. “After that I feel a bit like myself again.”

“Yes,” said the other Doctor. “So do I.”

They stood amiably together in the gloop for a while.


	10. Chapter 10

Now the fight was over, the Doctor looked around the ruined hospital ward. Pipework was visible through holes in the shattered floor. Green goo dripped down the walls, sliding down over the patients and their beds. Her own coat was damp and stained with green, but the mess hadn’t seemed to have touched the other Doctor at all. She looked as clean and professional as she had before the fight, as if all of this had merely been another new medical procedure.

“How’re you going to explain all of this?” the Doctor asked her other self.

“I usually say there’s been a problem with some new equipment,” that other self replied.

“And people believe that?”

“I doubt it. But I they’re usually too intimidated to ask more.”

She bristled the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver at a blob of goop, and frowned.

“But I won’t be explaining any of this,” she said, “because I have to run. The Division; they’ve given up using intermediaries. Stopped caring if all this is out in the open.”

The Doctor grimaced. “No Judoon any more,” she said.

Her other self laughed.

“The Judoon!” she said. “I’d almost forgotten them. We’re a long way past that now. They’ve hired the worst of the worst to track me down. The Lexligiest, the Angela of the North. People think that the patients are seeing things.”

“And now even that isn’t enough,” said the Doctor. “What did we do? To invest so much in fighting us?”

She saw her other self tense, and glower. A chill air seemed to settle behind the frames of her glasses.

“Maybe it’s a question of what we refused to do,” that other self finally said. “The Division don’t have much time for moral standards.”

“Says the woman who manipulated someone into shooting themselves.”

The other Doctor didn’t smile. “Maybe that tells you something about how bad the Division are.”

She sighed.

“I’ve risked a lot coming back here,” she said. “I didn’t think they’d make an attack so openly. They don’t like to be seen to interfere. And I don’t have a lot of time.”

She looked her other self right in the eyes.

“I need to get back to the TARDIS,” she said. “And you should get back to yours, too. It won’t just be me they’re coming for.”

“I got out of jail once,” said the Doctor.

“We’re not talking jail anymore,” her other self said. “The worst punishments of the Time Lords? Even I never found out about them.”

“Oh,” said the Doctor glumly. “I did.”

“Then from your face maybe I’m better off not knowing.”

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “Maybe.”

She let herself pull a massive grin that she knew would end up looking unconvincing.

“You’re still Doctor Clayton, I see,” she said brightly. “Still a Ruth.”

“I am,” said her other self. “Have you decided to go for a change?”

“John Smith. Might need to work on that a bit.”

Her other self nodded. “Then keep fighting, Doctor Smith.”

The Doctor nodded back. “Doctor Clayton.”

“‘Till our timeline crosses again.”

It hadn’t been the most productive meeting in the end, accidentally leading her enemy right to her other self. But the Doctor was nothing if not optimistic, even when people asked her to stop. She had an idea she knew how to find out more about where the Division were hiding, one she didn’t think would even occur to her other self.

Doctor Clayton wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary here, because she didn’t know what ordinary even was.

But Doctor Smith knew someone who knew ordinary very well. 

And she might be very good at spotting when something was wrong.


	11. Chapter 11

There was a red telephone box outside the hospital with no police box beside it. It felt smaller on its inside, like it had been designed for something thinner than a person. The Doctor fit within it as she dialled Judith, but only just: her giant coat filled up the space like some kind of fabric wrapping.

“It’s the Doctor, from upstairs!” she said brightly when she heard the phone pick up at the other end. “ I’m at your work!”

“Doctor!” said Judith’s voice, sounding alarmed. “How did you get my number?”

“I’m very clever!”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I went through your things. The point is, I’ve just met Doctor Clayton! And she’s me, just like we thought.”

“I see. And you definitely didn’t mention me, like we said?”

“Too busy being attacked. I’m trying to work out who by. And that’s why I’m calling, you see.”

The Doctor frowned.

“I was wondering,” she said. “Have you noticed anyone strange when working here? Not eccentric, or actually unwell. They’re different things. But anyone… who didn’t quite fit in. In a different way.”

There was silence on the line.

“People like me,” said the Doctor. “Or Doctor Clayton. But that’s fine. It’s people like me who we’re looking for.”

There was more silence. Finally, Judith spoke in a very small voice.

“You’ll think little of me,” she said. “But we know how people treat us. The staff who aren’t white. We’re always seen as less, even when they don’t say it out not loud. But that’s not true of Doctor Clayton. And – well – it’s not true of him, as well.”

She hesitated.

“It’s probably nothing,” she said.

“But maybe it is,” said the Doctor.

“Maybe. I thought— that Porter. He’s just like her. People’re always saying you have to know your place; you can’t question that, not in a hospital. There’s the doctors and the nurses and the porters way below. But his place? It could be by the Queen of England, or above her. It doesn’t matter about his station, or the colour of his skin. He gets a respect the rest of us never would.”

“And you envy that,” said the Doctor.

“I know I shouldn’t,” said Judith.

She sighed, a hiss of static down the line.

“People wouldn’t give him half of what I get,” she said. “And all he does is lug things around. I’m saving lives.”

“He might be doing a fair bit more than that,” said the Doctor. “I wonder if he’s not really a porter at all.”

“You think so?”

“Honestly? A man who thinks highly of himself isn’t much of a lead. But it might be something.”

“You think he’s another one of you?” said Judith.

“Oh, no,” said the Doctor. “I think he might be a Lord of Time.”

“Right,” said Judith.

“I always knew it was quite an unusual hospital,” she added, weakly.

“You’re a star, Judith,” said the Doctor. “Your help’s just as good as your cooking.”

“Well. I do what I can.”

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “And that’s all we can do, isn’t it?”

But she was glad Judith couldn’t see her face on this end of the line. Haunted. Concern mounting on her brow.

Because a part of her was starting to worry that maybe all they could do wasn’t going to be enough.


	12. Chapter 12

It wasn’t hard to find the Porter, once you knew that you should be looking for him. A few questions in the right places, a few people who’d say there was no one who matched his description. A few furrowed brows when they stopped and said, no, there actually was, in the rooms at the bottom of the older buildings, near where all the construction was underway. A nice man, they’d say, although they didn’t actually say why. And under their voices the Doctor heard the tiniest suggestion of fear.

He was in a shabby break room, sitting alone. Tall and thin and poised, like a predatory stick. Clothes more suited to a lost prince than a porter. Sometimes it was hard to tell if the person before you really was a Time Lord— and sometimes it really wasn’t, not at all. The Porter didn’t just look like he owned the room. He looked like he owned the whole galaxy.

“Mark Jones,” he said, stretching out a hand as the Doctor entered.

“That’s a very common name,” said the Doctor, not extending hers.

“I’m a very common man,” said the person in front of her, who’d probably never been a Mark Jones at all. His hand remained in front of him, like ice.

“You don’t give that impression,” said the Doctor.

“Grace and poise are not only the pursuit of the upper classes, Miss”—

“ _Doctor._ Doctor Smith.”

The Porter smiled. “A very common name.”

The Doctor scowled.

“There’s a lot of people called Jones in Wales,” she said. “That where you’re from?”

He shook his head. “Somewhere much further away. You wouldn’t have heard of it; it’s very remote. A place called _Gallifrey._ ”

“Oh, I’ve heard of it,” said the Doctor. “The architecture’s very pretty there. Timeless.”

The Porter nodded slightly, eyes narrowing.

“Although,” said the Doctor, “I’ve heard there’s increasing division”—

“Let’s drop the charade,” said the Porter. “I know there are those within the Division who don’t approve of what we’re doing”—

“Like the Doctor.”

“Well. We have been tracking her. And it looks like we might just bring her in after all.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” snarled the Doctor.

“A woman in a coat that’s far too big for her,” said the Porter. “Oh no.”

“And you’re a man whose ego’s too big for him,” said the Doctor. “Pride comes before a fall. Lay off the COPS.”

“Not until the end. If it helps, I’d still say that if I actually felt threatened by you.”

“You don’t know what you’re up against,” said the Doctor. “And you’ll never win. You know you never do.”

The Porter smiled. “To me that sounds like complacency,” he said.

“Well, to me that sounds like… a smarty pants!” spluttered the Doctor.

“Insulting my intelligence by saying I have a lot of it. A novel approach.It’s like what I’d already expected. You’re not quite what you used to be.”

The Doctor narrowed her eyes.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, I’m sure you have an idea already, Doctor Smith. I went through the records from the Judoon. They’d arrested a fugitive Doctor. Not the right one. But they did leave a description.”

“Guilty as charged,” said the Doctor, her mouth now forming a snarl.

“You’re lucky you’re not always like this,” said the Porter. “And we’re lucky you’re not always like her. I’ll be honest. A part of me is sad to see you sunk so low. I’ll bet you don’t even remember what this old thing might be.”

From a pocket in his trousers he took out a small doorknob, bronze and engraved with something like a Celtic design. It hovered above the palm of his hand, unbothered by gravity.

“Oh no, that,” said the Doctor. “I know all about that. Call me Ms Knowledge of… uh… Knowing Island”—

“The CULLIS is not a device that opens doors,” intoned the Porter as he ignored her completely. “As much as it opens your eyes. To the corridors that were always really there. To possibility…”

He took the CULLIS into his hand and held it to the air, like the knob was just one part of a wide and invisible door. And as he did the Doctor saw just what he had meant: how if you slipped behind the plastic chairs you might slip into a distant meadow, or if you ran towards just the right point in the wall you could find a corridor through all of time and space. Routes to other places that were everywhere, if only you had eyes to see—

“You’ve forgotten how much is out there, Doctor,” said the Porter with a smile. “But there’s still a possibility you might have missed. You can leave. Now. Keep the past to the past, before we slam another cell door in your face.”

“Never,” said the Doctor. “Whatever you might think of me. I am still the same old woman I know you fear.”

“Even if you are,” said the Porter. “You’ve no idea what you’re up against. Even we don’t know. But it is extremely strong. Impossibly powerful. And there are worse things to be running from than the Division.”

The Doctor tried not to look alarmed at the news she was up against anything.

“Until we fight again,” said the Porter, with a smile surprisingly warm. “Old foe. And older friend.”

–and he turned the CULLIS in his hand and was walking to another part of London, like anyone could have done in that room, if only they’d seen how–

—and then the Doctor blinked, and he was gone. 

She looked around the tiny room, so cramped and normal. There weren’t any windows. The only possible exit was the door.

Just for a moment, the Doctor tried it. Scrunching up her face, focusing her mind. Trying as hard as she could to see all those pathways to other places, which had been so incredibly obvious a moment before. If she focused hard enough she might be able to do it—

—but there was only the room in front of her, nothing more.


	13. Chapter 13

Yaz knocked on Judith’s front door tentatively, hoping her nerves wouldn’t show. It was late in the morning now and nice for October, a pale sun hanging in the cloudless air. Birds chirped and the garden was full of smells. Nature trundled normally on, unaware of the end of the world.

Judith opened the door just a crack, then swung it open when she saw Yaz on the other side.

“Yaz,” she said. “How did you know I was in?”

Yaz shrugged. “It was a guess,” she said. “You were alright with the Doctor going to your work in the morning. I didn’t think you would be if you might meet her there.”

Judith nodded slightly, still tense but relaxing. “I can see why you became a police officer,” she said.

Yaz shifted uncomfortably.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s— it’s sort of why I wanted to talk to you”—

Judith tensed up again. “I’ve never committed a crime!” she said.

“No!” Yaz said. “That’s not what I meant. We’re trained to”—

She sighed.

“We know when something’s not right with someone,” she said.

Judith laughed, hollowly. “Why would it be?” she said. 

“I know,” said Yaz.

“I bought you a Battenberg cake,” she added, handing it over. “So that’s something.”

“Those’re nice,” said Judith. Her smile didn’t carry to her eyes.

“I wasn’t sure what you do for gifts in 1962,” said Yaz. “I had to look it up on my phone.”

Judith frowned. “You looked up your phone?”

“I wanted to show you. Maybe I’m not living on the Moon in 2020. But some things’ve changed.”

She handed over her big, flat smartphone to Judith, swiping and tapping the touchscreen to unlock it.

“It’s thanks to the Doctor that it works back here,” said Yaz. “In this time; in 1962. But the rest is all by us. It’s because of people.”

Judith swiped her way through the smartphone, her eyes widening as she scrolled through Yaz’s world.

“There’s so much,” Judith said. “Look at all these people writing songs! And what they’re wearing.”

“A lot’s happened,” said Yaz. “But the Queen is still alive.”

Judith kept staring at the smartphone, disbelieving of the device and the future it contained.

“I can’t imagine it,” she said. “How could things go on for that long? The Cold War never ending. Never getting hot.”

“Oh, it ended.” said Yaz. “But it was ages before I was even born. The fall of the Berlin Wall.”

Judith stared at her. “They took down the Berlin Wall?!” she said.”

“Yeah. Well. Someone did.”

“And what, the USSR just lets it happen?”

Yaz shook her head. “There isn’t any USSR any more.”

“What?!” said Judith. She looked like Yaz had told her the Moon was no longer there.

“Yeah,” said Yaz. “It all just falls apart. But I don’t know much about it.”

“Why don’t they strike back?” said Judith. “They’d rather die than see what they’ve built fall apart.”

Yaz felt her stomach clench as she realised she’d never thought about it before. The sense of the planet dying before she had even existed, a solidness in the world dropping away.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Are they all still there?” asked Judith. “The nuclear weapons?”

Yaz bit her lip, the pit in her stomach now widening into a chasm.

“Yeah,” she said. “I suppose they are.”

“That doesn’t make it sound like you think about them very much.”

“Maybe I should. I don’t think any of us really think of them, where I’m from. They feel like they belong in the past. To your time.”

Judith stared at her in disbelief. Yaz saw several versions of what might be said next flick over Judith’s face, before she chose what she had to say next as delicately as she could.

“Then I’m sorry,” she said. “But I think that your world… should think more about things. Whatever your phones might be like.”

Yaz sighed.

“When I’m here, now?” she said. “I can see why you would think that way. But where I’m from? With the pandemic, and global warming, with everything that’s going on. We’ve enough to be getting on with, without thinking about nuclear war.”

Judith didn’t say anything to that. She still looked like she wasn’t very convinced.

“I was thinking last night,” Yaz. “I’d be just the same as you, Judith, if I met someone from as far away. The time between you and me, that’s what? 58 years? That’s like me meeting someone from 2078. And that… it doesn’t even sound real. The future doesn’t feel real. Even though I’ve been there. And I wanted to talk to you because I wanted to say— that I’m scared too. Even if the Doctor doesn’t notice.”

For the first time in their conversation, Judith smiled in a way that looked real.

“Does she tell you too?” she said. “That it’s all going to be okay?”

Yaz laughed.

“She doesn’t tell me anything! But I wouldn’t find it helpful, anyway. Not after the year I’ve had.”

“I can’t believe it,” said Judith. “That this isn’t the end of the world. Even if she insists otherwise.”

Yaz looked at her with a strange smile, conspiratorially.

“Well,” she said. “I think there’s something she might’ve overlooked.”

She shrugged to herself, very slightly.

“It’s like you said, Judith. I am a good detective. And sometimes I notice what people themselves don’t see. So I think I might’ve got something. With her. And if I’m right the whole planet’s in danger.”

Judith laughed when she said that, and not in a bitter way. It sounded like she was almost happy to hear her world might be destroyed.

“I’m just thinking,” she said. “The Doctor said we’re not in danger and now you’re saying we might be. But I’m reassured by you. I wasn’t by her. Don’t you think that’s ridiculous?”

Yaz shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I think that it’s”—

She sighed.

“It’s human,” she said. “It’s only being human.”

Judith smiled, though her eyes were far away. Both of them were quiet for a while.

“This is too much cake just for me,” she said eventually. “Would you like some tea? I imagine you have that in 2020.”

“We do,” said Yaz, grinning. “And yeah. I’d like that, Judith. I’d like that very much.”

The two of them went into Judith’s house, happy to forget the world just for a while.


End file.
